Civilization 5 First Major Patch Arrives

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A little over a week ago, Firaxis announced that a major patch to address bugs, UI changes, and exploits in Civilization V, was on the way. As promised, the first major update to Civilization V has been released today, and the list of changes is a bit longer than initially reported.

Among the huge list of fixes and changes is the much requested ability to disable "auto-unit cycling," which lets players command their units in the order they see fit, rather than being prompted by the computer to issue orders in seemingly random order. Other changes, like allowing players to sell a city's obsolete buildings later in the game in order to reduce maintenance costs are subtle, but quite welcome.

As always, the patch will automatically be applied for Steam users the next time they launch the service.

The complete (and dizzying) list of changes is as follows:

UI

  • Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
  • Aircraft banner corrections - now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
  • Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
  • Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
  • Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
  • Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the "open" side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
  • Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
  • Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
  • Auto-populate save menu with save file name
  • Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
  • Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
  • Added new tab to the Economic Overview Screen: "Resources & Happiness."
  • Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for "always up" score similar to Civ IV.)
  • The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with each action.
  • If there are less than 5 buildings still needed to construct a National Wonder, the production popup tool-tip now lists which cities lack them.
  • Added Yield & Culture tool-tip info to the production popup.
  • Tweak information on the Global Politics tab in the Diplomacy Overview screen.
MODDING
  • Category list now displays correctly
  • "Installed" panel now displays ALL versions of a mod but prevents the user from enabling multiple versions.
GAMEPLAY
  • Workers - Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don't change what you decide was best for a plot).
  • Workers - Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
  • Economy - Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
  • Economy - Increased city wealth setting to 25%
  • Economy - Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
  • Economy - Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
  • Trade - Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
  • City States - Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
  • Military - Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
  • Military - Fix for Minuteman movement.
  • Military - Correct promotions for "archer-like" units (horse archers, chariots).
  • Military - Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
  • Military - Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
  • Balance - Engineers +1 hammer
  • Balance - Disbanding units now provides only 10% of their production cost in gold.
  • Request - Enable "one more turn" button if you lose, but are still alive.
AI
  • Military - Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.).
  • Military - AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
  • Military - Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
  • Diplomacy - AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
  • Diplomacy - Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
  • City - City specialization and city focus improvements.
  • City - Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
  • Workers - Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
  • Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
  • City - Make sure Puppets don't construct buildings that require Resources.
  • City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
  • Military - Defensive tactical AI update. When you are at war and threatening an enemy city, the AI will better utilize the garrison, as well as the surrounding terrain in defense of the target city.
MULTIPLAYER
  • Exploit - Fix for gifting unit exploit
  • Chat - Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
  • Deals - Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed
MISC
  • Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
  • Save/Load - Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
  • Map - Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
  • Map - Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the "glowing red orbs" seen on the map are an indicator of this).
  • Map - Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
  • Strategic View - Crash fix for units rendering in background.
  • Strategic View - Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
  • Eyefinity - Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
  • Tutorials - Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
  • Multiple crash fixes.
  • Taller than wide map crash fix.
From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 22, 2010 2:45 PM

    Have they added the ability to turn on unit animations in multiplayer yet? That's the big killer for me - we grabbed this game in the hopes of getting an epic LAN party going with it, but gave up on it pretty quick just because of how annoying it was not seeing any of the battle anims (units just spontaneously vanish) - and because of all the other issues of course.

    • reply
      October 22, 2010 2:50 PM

      So agree!! I play this co-op only, and:

      -No combat animation makes the game *much* more ugly.
      -They stripped out the ability to make a flat map of large size (which is what we always enjoyed playing) Only spherical maps are allowed.
      -On pangea, when we use a normal water level, we get archepelago strips and islands. Low water level also gives islands on larger maps.

      Civ IV is still a better multi-player game AFAIC.

    • reply
      October 22, 2010 2:52 PM

      Yeah, this is a big deal for me too.

    • reply
      October 22, 2010 3:40 PM

      Totally agree here. Was playing a game with a friend then realized there was all this yellow smoke around my capital. Yeah, my "buddy" just nuked my capital and I didn't even notice.

      I pay for a pc game because it's animated and looks cool. If i wanted to play static looking game board I would buy a board game.

    • reply
      October 22, 2010 3:42 PM

      Count me in also. Make it an option, so that IF it is unbearably slow, you can turn it off.

    • reply
      October 22, 2010 3:48 PM

      Yeah, that would be nice.

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